Blues for Levantium Lost

On September 11, 2012, four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya. Ever since, their fog-of-war deaths have been fodder for a macabre, puppet-theater burlesque of right-wing propaganda. Contrarians may wax poetic with fanciful exaggerations, but the dead did not “come home in wooden boxes.” As it has been for decades, their remains were respectfully returned to Dover Air Force Base in flag-draped metal containers.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were there when the plane landed. Here is … [more]

If

By Arkansas Times’ “The Observer” (David Koon), June 14, 2018

If you can, cast your mind back to when you were very young and recall what it felt like to be separated from your mother and father. Not just playing in the yard or another part of the house, but truly, even for a moment, lost. Recall the vice crush of panic in your chest.

If you were ever a parent, remember the feeling of being in a … [more]

Ah, dearly beloved, ‘tis no earthly pleasure can compare to the sweet caress of gentle enlightenment! But when ye write, use not vain repetitions, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking (with apologies to Matthew 6:7 and the KJV). Verily, we beseech thee to keep thy blithering succinct.

Yea, it doth seem that Donald J. Trump loveth America and God, probably in that order, yet there is one he surely loveth above … [more]

Selections from a recent Facebook conversation. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, the willfully ignorant, the woefully beguiled, and the morally repugnant (see fundie #5). Due to the branching nature of such conversations on social media, this is stitched together from various, sometimes parallel/simultaneous narratives and is therefore only a linear approximation of a non-linear medium. Grammar and spelling have been only rarely altered so as to preserve the intellectual intensity and profundity (and inanity) of the comments … [more]

In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously refused to define obscenity. Instead, he responded with these words: “But I know it when I see it…” A few Sundays back, in a front-page story in this newspaper, we all saw it and we all know it. American politics has become an obscenity.

Seems that a first-term “representative” of the Arkansas Fourth Congressional District – one of our public “servants” – has raised more than two million dollars to … [more]

Sometime in the mid-1930s, when my dad was about 12, a Ford Tri-Motor (aka “The Tin Goose”) flew onto a cow pasture just outside of Holdenville, Oklahoma. For the next several days, for the mere price of a bread wrapper and fifty cents, a person could buy a short flight. Bereft of even a half-dollar in those Depression days, my father spent every afternoon and evening at that pasture, watching as the airplane took off and landed.

For letter writers beseeching the Almighty to please hurry up and make Mike Nunn pray the sinner’s prayer or walk the Roman Road, or whatever the latest trick is for getting past St. Peter and the Pearly Gates, take a break from your earnest lamentations and look around. Notice all those empty pews? Brothers and sisters, the salvation of Mr. Nunn is hardly Christendom’s biggest problem. Your more immediate concern should be that your fellow saints are fleeing … [more]

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